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The Secret World
The Secret World is a massively multiplayer online role-playing video game set in a modern-day real world under attack from occult forces. Ragnar Tornquist led development of the initial game for Funcom. The Secret World uses a subscription-optional, buy-to-play business model, requiring players only to buy the game with no additional subscription fees, with additional benefits to those members still paying a subscription. In 2017, The Secret World was relaunched as Secret World Legends. In the game, the player's character joins one of three world-controlling secret societies attempting to repel, mitigate or exploit the attack of Lovecraftian entities and other immortal beings in coastal Maine, rural Egypt, Transylvania and a quarantined section of Tokyo, and advance their society's agenda over that of the others. The game uses a contemporary setting, borrowing heavily from the horror fiction genre and folklore, with a fog-ringed, zombie-infested New England fishing village for the novice player, mummies and cultists in Egypt for the mid-level player, followed by vampires and werewolves in Transylvania and ghosts, robots, Oni and an interdimensional occult cancer in Tokyo. Mission content bleeds into player faction headquarters in London, Seoul and the DUMBO neighborhood in Brooklyn, and into the game's transport network, along the subterranean branches of Yggdrasil in Agartha. Unlike many other MMORPGs, there is no need to stop to use most of a character's attacks and abilities; as a result, combat is faster and movement-based. The character is free (and at higher levels, occasionally obliged) to redevelop their abilities on the go, to better prepare themselves for specific threats or better integrate into a group. Unlike traditional MMORPGs, advancement is primarily through equipment, using experience points to buy additional abilities and more powerful weapons. Setting The game features an original setting created by Funcom, with contemporary elements as well as "magic, myths, conspiracies and dark horrors."Tornquist debunked several rumors surrounding The Secret World, stating that "there are no aliens or science fiction elements" in it.6 He also denied any connection to The Longest Journey. The game is set in the "modern day real world" but also incorporates pieces of ancient mythologies, real and alternative history, urban legends, and pop culture, and ties them into an original backstory. The latter is said to go back in time for 100 million years and encompass extinct ancient civilizations. The players will assume the roles of supernatural heroes who participate in a "future war between good and evil", fighting dark monsters that threaten the modern world. Tørnquist identified the genre of the story as dark fantasy, featuring vampires, demons and zombies. The player is free to travel across different locations of the world (both real, like London, New York and Seoul, and mythical, such as Agartha, the legendary city located within Hollow Earth and the Hell dimension) and even in time, to pursue the overall plot and investigate new mysteries in connection to the dark invasion. The overall plot has a conclusion but the designers also leave room for future issues and expansions. H. P. Lovecraft's works, the Indiana Jones franchise and Stephen King's novels are major inspirations for the game's settings and storylines Plot A bee flies into the character's sleeping mouth one month after an occult terrorist attack in Tokyo subways. In dreams the character is offered survival of the fast-approaching End of Days in return for service to an Elder God, while a good and bad angel advise the player to defy the god or else make wary use of it. The character awakes with magical powers which the character spends a week learning to control before being recruited as an agent either politely by the Templars, menacingly by the Illuminati, or incomprehensibly by the Dragon. The character then travels to London, Brooklyn or Seoul to receive training and endure a variously-induced hypnotic flashback of the Tokyo disaster. After choosing weapons they are sent to the first of several supernatural disaster zones around the world to advance their society's interests. The first three playfields are on fictional Solomon Island, Maine, walled off by occult fog and besieged by zombies, with heavy influences from H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King (references to horror writings such as Edgar Allan Poe's and King's include "Flagg's Pharmacy", the "Overlook Motel", "Jack & Wendy's Bed & Breakfast," and an occupation of the town by ravens with unpleasant habits. NPC have Kingian names like "Creed" and "Bannerman"). Scandinavian "Draug" undead and ancient Mayan invaders, some human, begin to reveal the legacy of an ancient war fought on the mountain to control what is beneath it. A black liquid called the "filth" bubbles up from beneath the mountain, rapidly corrupting the minds and bodies of all creatures who contact it and gradually revealed to consist of the dreams of old gods. The player's investigation centers upon a man calling himself Beaumont who is working with the world's most popular New Age cult, Morninglight, actually bent on feeding the world to eldritch beings. Also present on the island are the Order of Phoenician Sailors, a resentful global pirate/mercenary army, and the in-house soldiers and scientists of Orochi, the world's largest tech conglomerate. The player gradually discovers the legendary identities of both Beaumont and of a sword which, brought by fishermen to the island, initiated the horrors there. Forging an alliance with the island's Native American community, the character enlists ancient powers to defeat Beaumont. Dungeons accessible from the island include: the site of a capsized tanker further offshore haunted by a small Cthulhu avatar; a part of the Hell Dimensions where a human bent on redeeming Hell is held captive; and the island's ancient past where the war over the mountain is fought. After facing Beaumont, the character is sent to the Valley of the Sun God, a fictional tourist area in Egypt. One map in the area hides a hidden ancient city built to worship an evil god, while the other boasts a small modern town situated above the as-yet-undiscovered ruins of ancient Thinis. Recently, blights resembling the "seven plagues" of Egypt have manifested, along with a Filth eruption associated with the return of the cult of historic sun-god Aten and, indeed, of the historical pharaoh Akhenaten, father of Tutankhamen and initiator of Ancient Egypt's short-lived experiment with monotheist Aten worship. The player is assisted by a mafia of black-marketeering mummies, by a millennia-old paramilitary resistance movement named the Marya, by a cagey eyewitness of old-testament events wielding what seems to be Aaron's Rod, and by Akhenaten's rebellious high priest and the seven of his own children he sacrificed in order to create seven avatars of the Egyptian pantheon, in the form of giant Sentinel statues. Dungeons include another Hell Dimension and an ancient Aten temple teeming with what's left of some very unwise Orochi scientists. The next location the character visits is Bacaş County, Transylvania, where an ancient human-fairy truce has been broken by an army of vampires besieging the local town. The plot reveals this siege is at the request of their queen Mara, concealing her work to exploit another Filth source and gateway into other dimensions originally opened by the Orochi Group using Emma, a captive teenaged psychic. The vampires are being opposed by the Drăculești, a group founded by Vlad Dracula to hunt and fight supernatural creatures. The Filth is also present in the Bacaş County and it is corrupting the land and its inhabitants. The character later revisits the three main locations, and they slowly learn that all three major catastrophes are heavily linked to the Orochi Group and its mysterious leaders; Samuel Chandra and Lily Engel. The player faces Lily in Transylvania and her true identity-Lilith-is revealed. Lily manages to escape to Kaidan and the character is sent to Venice by their handler. In Venice they discover that the group known as the Council of Venice, responsible for keeping the peace in the secret world, has been corrupted. Finally the character goes to Kaidan, which is located in Tokyo, Japan. A bomb was released in the Kaidan subway, which started the spread of the Filth and the destruction of the world. The headquarters of the Orochi Group is also located in Kaidan, as is the Black Signal, the digital mind of a Filth cultist who now directs the Filth creatures in Kaidan. Several groups are fighting for control of Kaidan and it is up the player character to discover the mysteries of Tokyo, find out who released the bomb, and face Lily and the Orochi Group. The Tokyo areas utilize many Japanese legends, such as the Namahage. ----